by Peter Lance
“How outrageous can you get?” says Patton. “Joe was set up. They should have given him a chance to get out and take care of his five kids. To honor nineteen years of great service.”
The blow to his family and his reputation sent Simone into a spiral. “First there was severe depression; then I wound up becoming an alcoholic,” he says. Simone was bitter. “At one point during the trial, Favo had this smirk on his face,” he remembers. “And I went up to him and I said, ‘You little shit. You didn’t cheat me out of my pension. You cheated my wife and my kids. And I will never forgive you for that.’”
Today, Simone, the veteran cop who helped lock up a third of the wiseguys during the Colombo war, resorts to working odd jobs to pay the bills. His wife works full-time as a nurse. Having gone through rehab, he now attends seven AA meetings a week as he tries to piece his life together, enjoy his grandchildren, and forget.
Not surprisingly, Lin DeVecchio weighs in on Simone’s case in his book. In a long section, he relates a conversation he says he had with Dave Stone, whom he describes as a “well respected supervisor” in the FBI’s NYO.36
“No way Joe Simone is corrupt,” DeVecchio writes, quoting Stone. “No way Joe is a dirty cop.” Lin then replies, “Favo says he’s got a good case.” Then, after Stone’s assurance that Simone was one of his best detectives, Lin adds, “Favo said he’s got him on tape with Big Sal Miciotta”—an allegation that was proven entirely untrue at Simone’s trial.
A few paragraphs later in the book, DeVecchio describes an exchange he says he had with Stone about Simone’s impending arrest, writing that he gave Stone permission to make the collar.
“I’ll take him in my car. No cuffs,” he quotes Stone as saying. “Favo worked with Joe on my squad for a year,” Dave added. “Joe Simone helped teach him a lot. They should . . . let him surrender himself.” Lin then writes that he told Stone, “It’s in the Eastern District’s hands. The best I can do is let you arrest him.”
Earlier in the book, seemingly sympathetic to Simone, DeVecchio writes, “Detective Joseph Simone, a twenty-year veteran and a father of six [sic], was the first fellow law enforcement officer that Chris Favo ever officially accused of corruption—even before me.” But on the morning of Simone’s arrest, and in the months that followed, there’s no record of Lin DeVecchio doing a thing to intervene on Simone’s behalf.
“I want to know where Lin was when my life was being destroyed,” Joe told me in an interview.37 “He just sat there and let me twist in the wind. He even writes in his book that Favo said he had a tape of me and Miciotta. But there was no tape. It’s outrageous.”
More outrageous was the timing of Simone’s arrest. If DeVecchio, who was the squad supervisor at the time, had waited another twenty-four hours, Simone would have retired, and under NYPD rules he’d have his pension today. Now, nearly ten years after “the roof caved in,” he still doesn’t have his retirement benefits from the department.
“Of all the many injustices exposed in the scandal over Gregory Scarpa Sr. and Lin DeVecchio,” says Angela Clemente, “what the Feds did to Joe Simone—one of their own—is among the worst.”38
Chapter 36
GASPIPE’S CONFESSION
By the spring of 1994 the Feds were in damage-control mode, seeking to protect their war prosecutions from the growing taint of the Scarpa-DeVecchio scandal. At that point they’d offered two explanations for the leaks: first that Detective Joe Simone had passed on intel to the Colombos, and second, as alleged during that meeting with Valerie Caproni in the fall of 1993, that the intelligence had come to Scarpa via his good friend Anthony Casso.1 But despite the NYPD’s punitive move on Simone’s pension, he was entirely vindicated in federal court, and by April, Casso was about to shatter the second theory—that he had shared his “crystal ball” of intelligence received from the Mafia Cops with Greg Scarpa.2
Within days of being seized at his New Jersey hideout in January, Casso was taken from the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) to the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn. Ostensibly, the meeting was to discuss whether he should provide handwriting samples as ordered by Judge Eugene Nickerson. But when he got into a room with FBI agent Richard Rudolph from the Lucchese squad, Gaspipe dropped a bomb.3
“If you guys make me a good offer . . . I’ll work with you,” he said, knowing that AUSA Charlie Rose’s office was a few doors away. Rose* was the senior Eastern District prosecutor who had been assigned to Casso’s case, along with Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg O’Connell.4
At that point, Casso was well aware that his former crime partner Greg Scarpa had earned a generous plea deal after offering to cooperate and renounce his ties to LCN. And Casso, like Scarpa, was known for his Machiavellian playbook.
As Phil Carlo put it in Gaspipe, “For Charlie Rose this was truly a monumental occasion. Anthony Gaspipe Casso turning was a milestone in the annals of crime history.” In February, a deal was structured in which Casso would serve six and a half years after pleading guilty to a seventy-two-count indictment. Considering the fact that Casso, who had been made in 1974 at the age of thirty-two,5 would take responsibility for fifteen murders and reportedly admit to another twenty-one, it was a plea bargain worthy of Sammy Gravano’s.6
At that moment in late February, however, it was far from a done deal. The plea was in a preliminary stage that the Feds call a “proffer.” It wouldn’t be official until it was reduced to writing and all parties, including the court, had agreed to the terms. In the meantime, according to Casso, his then lawyer, who represented a number of other Mafiosi, withdrew from representing him. As Carlo explained it, this attorney didn’t want “to get a reputation as [one] who facilitated such cooperation.”7
With other wiseguys, that might be bad for business.
So Casso was assigned a new lawyer, Matthew Brief. In his memoir, Casso alleges that Brief told federal prosecutors he didn’t think the proffer protected his client enough. But according to Casso, Brief, who is now deceased, never informed him of that position at the time.8
On March 1, 1994, Anthony Casso pled guilty to the full seventy-two counts, expecting to get the short sentence in exchange for sharing everything he knew with the Feds. Immediately after his appearance before EDNY Magistrate Steven M. Gold, Casso was whisked by agent Rudolph to LaGuardia Airport, where they boarded a private plane bound for Texas. At that point in the FBI’s war against the Mafia, Casso, a Lucchese acting boss, was the most notorious CW the Feds had turned since Gravano. Befitting his star status, he was assigned to the “Valachi Suite” at La Tuna, a minimum-security federal prison twelve miles north of El Paso.9 In years past, the suite, a multiroom accommodation complete with a kitchen, had housed Mafia turncoats “Fat Vinnie” Teresa and Jimmy “the Weasel” Fratianno.10
When Casso started to talk, his debriefings were handled by Rudolph and James Brennan, the same special agent from the Lucchese squad who had been called to that meeting with Scarpa and DeVecchio in the fall of 1993, when “34” reportedly identified Gaspipe as his source for law enforcement intelligence.
Over the weeks that followed, Casso unleashed so many Mafia secrets that they filled 504 pages of FBI 302s. William Oldham, a former NYPD detective who later worked the Mafia Cops case as an investigator for the EDNY, described them in his 2006 book, The Brotherhoods: The True Story of Two Cops Who Murdered for the Mafia.11
Casso during his 60 Minutes interview
(CBS News)
“I spent the next two days and nights reading and rereading Casso’s 302s,” Oldham writes in the book, coauthored with Guy Lawson. “Casso was forthcoming in an unusually detailed way. [He] clearly didn’t want to get into trouble for holding anything back. To the contrary. He was meticulously forthcoming.”12
But in his interview with me and several follow-up letters, Casso insists that one crucial admission he made to Rudolph and Brennan never showed up in those 302s. He went into even more detail in Phil Carlo’s original manuscript, which I obtain
ed during the research for this book:
One of the first things Casso began to talk about . . . was corrupt police and FBI agents he had dealt with over the years. As part of the debriefing process, the agents were taking notes to memorialize exactly what Casso said. It is mandated that notes are written down on what is referred to as a 302 form. The “302s” would become viable legal documents that could be, and more than likely would be, used in a court of law.
Gaspipe then identified what he described as two “crooked agents” who had passed information to him. The first was reportedly a special agent from the Gambino squad. Because he is not the focus of this book, I’ve omitted that agent’s name from the section of Carlo’s original manuscript excerpted below.
According to what Casso told Phil Carlo, about halfway through his account, after he’d named this first agent as the source of “vitally important” information, Special Agent Richard Rudolph reacted loudly and negatively:
Agent Rudolph “literally jumped up,” according to Casso, from the table and shouted that he didn’t want to hear anything more about . He threw his pen down on the table and refused to take notes. Agent Rudolph leaned over, pointed his finger in Casso’s face and warned him not to mention or any other corrupt agents, not only to them, but to any assistant U.S. attorneys, i.e. Charlie Rose and Greg O’Connell. Both Charlie Rose and O’Connell were slated to arrive the next day to begin the task of making Casso a viable government witness. Writing up the 302s was the first step in that process and it wasn’t going well at all. Casso was shocked. He expected the agents to be happy; he expected them to be pleased that he was exposing crooked FBI agents. Just the opposite was true.13
“When Agent Richard Rudolph was contacted for this book,” Carlo noted, “he did not return phone calls.”14 As this book neared completion I was able to reach Special Agent Brennan, and his reaction to Casso’s allegation is reflected later in this chapter.15
Meanwhile, I uncovered some independent evidence that corroborates Casso’s allegation that he paid a special agent on the Gambino squad for information. It’s in the form of an FBI 302 memo dated January 17, 1992, memorializing the debriefing of Lucchese underboss “Little Al” D’Arco. In it, D’Arco described a payment of four thousand dollars a month made by Casso via Lucchese capo Salvatore Avellino, who controlled the family garbage-industry interests on Long Island.
Source advised every month AVELLINO would deduct a $4,000.00 expense for a Federal Agent who was supplying confidential information to AVELLINO. . . . AVELLINO informed source that this Federal Agent was on the Gambino squad and he (AVELLINO) was very nervous when meeting him. . . . Source advised he was sure it was a federal agent, meaning Federal Bureau of Investigation Agent, that AVELLINO was paying off, and in turn, receiving confidential information. AVELLINO was quizzed on a number of occasions and advised that this money should be going to a Federal Agent and not a cop.16
D’Arco’s confession is significant because when Burt Kaplan, Casso’s liaison with the Mafia Cops, became a cooperating witness, he told the Feds that Eppolito and Caracappa were on the payroll for four thousand dollars a month.17 Further, as evidenced by his testimony against Vic Orena, D’Arco was a CW whose credibility the Feds swore by. So, if nothing else, his confirmation that Casso had ordered a monthly payment in that same amount to an FBI agent on the Gambino squad supports Gaspipe’s first allegation to agents Rudolph and Brennan at La Tuna about a “crooked Fed.”
According to Carlo’s account, Rudolph explained to Casso that he and this Gambino squad agent “had been friends for over twenty years and that agent had integrity and honesty and was above reproach.” So, as Carlo writes, realizing that “the wind was already blowing against him,” Casso didn’t mention that agent’s name again.
But Gaspipe wasn’t finished. Undaunted, he then offered the name of “another crooked agent.” This is what Carlo wrote in his original manuscript, quoting Casso:
Let’s talk about him. His name is Lindley DeVecchio. He worked with Greg Scarpa for many years. He supplied LCN with a lot of information.18
At that point, according to Carlo, Rudolph said:
“Don’t you get it? I don’t want to hear about any crooked agents here. We aren’t here to talk about crooked agents. We’re here to talk about what you know about the Mafia—got it?”
Casso suddenly felt like he was standing naked in a cold room, his skin reddened by the frigid air. As he looked at Agent Rudolph, he saw enmity, anger, foreboding in his face. “I thought you wanted to know the truth about all the criminal things I was involved with,” Casso said.
“Yes, I do,” the agent said. “But I’m not interested in hearing your bullshit about crooked agents, Casso. If you’re here to pull my chain, I’m going to end this right here, right now, and you can go fuck yourself. You got that?”
By now, realizing that these FBI agents didn’t want to hear anything about other “crooked Feds,” Gaspipe, according to Carlo, revealed that he “had two NYPD detectives killing people” for him.
“You interested in that?” Casso asked.
“Getting warm,” Rudolph reportedly replied.19
Insisting That Lin Was a “Crooked Fed”
In my interview with Casso, he underscored Carlo’s account regarding the two allegedly “crooked Feds.”
“I told [Rudolph and Brennan] the[se other agents] were crooked,” he said, “and they didn’t want to hear it. When I brought this up in Texas they threw the yellow pad on the table with the pen. They refused even to write down what I was saying.”20
Beyond accusing Rudolph and Brennan of refusing to document his allegations, Casso went even further in Carlo’s book. Shortly after Gaspipe’s initial debriefing, Carlo writes, Special Agent Chris Favo came to the Valachi Suite to interview him.
Agent Rudolph made sure he sat between Casso and Agent Favo and he constantly gave Casso the hairy eyeball, making sure that Casso said nothing about DeVecchio’s misdeeds. When Agent Favo left, Rudolph told Casso that no one would listen to Favo.21
Casso also confirmed that account to me: “Chris Favo, when he came to see me, the agents sat right there . . . in between us. Even when the prosecutors came, they made sure they were right between us.”22
Former EDNY investigator William Oldham, who has read the entire 504 pages of Casso 302s, told me he is certain that “Casso told the truth the first time.” But he recalled that there was no mention of Gaspipe’s allegations about DeVecchio or the Gambino squad agent in those 302s.23
“In the 302s,” Oldham says, “Casso does not mention, to my recollection, anything other than the crystal ball of information [he got from the Mafia Cops]. He didn’t say a thing about federal law enforcement.”
I tried to get Special Agent Rudolph’s version of events. But after my repeated attempts to reach him, he never got back to me. However, retired SA James Brennan had this to say: “During the Casso debriefings, Casso did not relate to us at any time that he dealt with and received law enforcement intel from federal agents.”24
Casso’s credibility was later challenged, and the Feds ultimately reneged on his plea deal. Gaspipe insists that they broke the deal because he was too honest with them about their star cooperating witness, Sammy Gravano.
As Carlo writes, “When Anthony Casso, in the course of being debriefed by federal agents, talked about dealing drugs with Gravano, talked about murders by Gravano other than the ones Gravano said he committed, the agents didn’t want to hear it. No one in the federal government was interested.”25
The official reason the Feds broke the deal was their allegation that Casso committed crimes while in prison, including assaulting an inmate and bribing prison guards with cash, auto tires, and tickets to Broadway shows to supply him with liquor, wine, and steaks.26 The assistant U.S. attorney who alleged that Casso had violated his plea agreement was none other than George Stamboulidis, who had prosecuted Vic Orena and helped convict him on the testimony of Sammy the Bull and Al D’
Arco.
Now, instead of the initial six-and-a-half-year proffer, Casso was given 13 life sentences plus 455 years. After spilling his guts to the Feds in 504 pages of 302s—in which Oldham, the former EDNY investigator, had insisted he’d been initially honest—Gaspipe was now locked away in the Supermax prison and was never called to testify for the government at any subsequent trial. In the manuscript for his book Carlo writes that Casso was a victim of his own candor. The consequences of his challenging Sammy the Bull were clear:
If the defense attorneys could prove that Gravano had perjured himself, there would surely be a wave of appeals and an influx of complaints, creating a nightmare for the Justice Department and an embarrassment of monumental proportions.27
John Gotti wasn’t the only Mafia boss who could have earned a new trial if juries had believed Casso. Vic Orena might also have merited judicial relief. But the Feds insisted it was Casso’s “lack of credibility” that rendered him ineffective as a witness. Carlo quotes AUSA Greg O’Connell as stating, “Using Casso as a witness would have been like putting Adolf Hitler on the witness stand.”28
But O’Connell never got to hear about the “crooked Feds” from whom Gaspipe Casso insists he received information. After Eastern District prosecutors broke their deal with Casso, Oldham told me, “He tried to mold his story to whoever he was talking to.” But the former EDNY investigator insists that, in Casso’s initial debriefings, he “never found anything that wasn’t true.”29
Blaming the Mafia Cops
While Casso insists that he gave up Eppolito and Caracappa as his NYPD sources only after FBI agents Rudolph and Brennan refused to hear any talk of “crooked agents,” Lin DeVecchio seized on the Mafia Cops in his book to explain the leaks. In furnishing the evidence that prompted DeVecchio’s OPR investigation, Chris Favo and agents Tomlinson and Andjich had speculated that their boss may have leaked information to Jerry Capeci.30 Now, in his book, crediting Capeci with breaking the Mafia Cops story, DeVecchio writes: